Tour of SC Peanut and Cotton Farms

On the last day of the conference last week I was able to get out into rural South Carolina and visit three large peanut and cotton farms.

If you are driving by fields in Coshocton County, chances are very good you will see one of two crops- corn or soybeans. And for that matter, you will see this famous duo throughout the Midwest. But in the central counties of South Carolina, the two crops I saw in field after field were peanuts and cotton.

There are two types of peanuts that are grown in the southeastern US- runners and Virginia. Runners are smaller than Virginia peanuts and are used for peanut butter and peanut oil. Virginia peanuts are used for roasting and in candies. Our tour host, Charles Davis, the Clemson Cooperative Extension Agent for Calhoun, Orangeburg and Richland counties, explained that in the south, Virginia peanuts are also used for “bald” peanuts. At least that is what I heard at first. Turns out he was saying boiled peanuts.




Two types grown in SC - Runners on the left and Virginia on the right

The peanut plant looks somewhat similar to a soybean plant, but is more viney. Once the flowers have been pollinated, a little peg shoots out and goes down into the soil. The peanuts grow from this peg. So even though the peanuts grow underground, the plants are legumes just like soybeans, not tubers like potatoes.

Yellow flowers on a peanut plant

"Baby" peanuts- This field will most likely be ready to harvest in late August.

Charles Davis, Clemson Cooperative Extension,
pulled up a plant to show us how the peanuts form.

Kent Wannamaker (left of Davis) farms this land that is owned
by J.D. "Pally" Wiles. Bruce Clevenger (right of Davis) is a
fellow ANR extension educator in Defiance County.

Peanut harvest will begin in late August to early September. Harvest is a two-step process. First a peanut digger is pulled through the field to gently dig up the plants and turn them over to expose the peanuts. Then a combine is used that has a few adjustments made to reduce cracking the shells. Average yield is 2 ton per acre and peanut prices are around $400-500 a ton.

Peanut digger

This is a peanut harvester. Amadas has a partnership with John Deere to use
parts of their combine equipment - so those parts are painted green while the rest is blue.



This is a storage warehouse at Palmetto Peanut
that will be full of peanuts this fall.

Then we headed to Palmetto Farms to learn about cotton from father and son John and Diedrick Hane. I found it very interesting that growth inhibitors are applied to cotton plants to prevent them from growing too big. They are indeterminate plants, which just like an indeterminate tomato plant, means that it will not stop producing fruit (or bolls) as long as conditions remain favorable. There have been many genetic advances in cotton varieties in recent years, which has greatly reduced the amount of pesticides that are used to control insecs

Cotton plant with white flowers blooming

John Hane shows our group a cotton plant and explains
that all leaves must be removed from the plant before harvest.

Learning about the cotton harvesting equipment was just as interesting as learning about the cotton plants. This cotton harvester is amazing and gigantic! One man can do the work of 8 men with this machine. It is basically a picker combined with a giant baler. It is so large that the entire unit must be lowered into "road-mode" in order to be able to drive under power lines when driving on the road. The cotton is picked off with spindles and then blown up into the basket. The cotton is then baled and wrapped with a special plastic.

The back of the cotton picker is very similar to a hay baler.

John Hane explains how the spindles turn in the picker.

This is video of what the spindles look like from the side when the

panel is removed. The cotton is blown up the black tubes into the basket.

This is video looking in at the spindles rotating

I hope that you have enjoyed learning as much as I enjoyed these tours.